I Choose...

By K.C.

Sean Michael Ryan has been charged with the most unenviable decision in the history of mankind. He must either choose to save humanity or the planet earth. Sadly, he is not permitted to help them both.
Haunted for four decades by nightmares of a blond-haired, blue-eyed mute named Amber, Sean finally meets her in the real world. When their fateful union does not go precisely as expected, he is forced to flee to a remote tropical villa.
A bitter war rages on between those who would save the earth and those tasked with protecting humanity at all costs. Sean finds himself caught squarely in the middle. Yet, with every harrowing escape, and every narrowly averted disaster, he draws nearer and nearer to picking a side.
Ultimately, when the three groups clash in an epic final battle, it turns out there was even more at stake than any of them could ever have imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: K.C.
• Release date: Apr 26, 2014

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I Choose..

Written by K.C.

Copyright 2013 K.C.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or depicted in a fictitious manner or are used with permission. Any other resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or real events is purely coincidental.

At the end of the novel, I do give credit, to all those who have helped me with this project. I also recognize anyone who has given me permission to use their likenesses as characters, and the names of their actual businesses in my work.

Prologue

I must choose… to save humanity

or

I must choose… to save the earth.

Usually, I am not an either/or sort of person. I assume there are a hundred answers to every question, a thousand solutions to every problem. Under normal circumstances, that would be true. Only these were not normal circumstances, and mine was not a normal decision to make.

Some of you might be scratching your heads and wondering, If the earth was destroyed wouldn’t humanity perish as well? You make a very valid point, but in the end, it’s the wrong point. Homo sapiens would find a way to endure. Whether we took to the sky, retreated into caves, or slithered back to the bottom of the deepest, darkest oceans from which we came. Human beings would prevail and society would go on.

So, considering the dire consequences of my decision, I could use some outside advice. If it were up to you, which would you pick: man or the earth?

Perhaps you are inclined to save yourself or your loved ones? I can appreciate such loyalty to your species. I would, however, caution you to take heed. In relation to nature, it is nearly impossible to deny, human beings are a plague. Everything we touch, we destroy. It is no longer a matter of if we will kill the planet, but more a matter of when.

I guess we should choose to save the earth then? Don’t be too hasty. Door number two, presents its own drawbacks. If you open that portal, you will condemn every single man, woman, and child to die, without exception.

Don’t fret, I expect people to choose people. It only stands to reason. Assuming you did, I have but one final question. What sacrifices would you be willing to make for the rest of mankind?

And please spare me the I would give my life bullshit. It is so cliché. Every apocalyptic blockbuster finishes with the hero martyring themselves for our benefit. Been there, seen that, bought the tee shirt, and the subsequent Blue Ray. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate your courage, your willingness to lay down your own life is valiant, but it is utterly pointless to our cause.

In order to make the informed decision you need to be braver than the martyr and smarter than the scholar. You must consider not only the two options themselves, but every possible contingency that results from each. Think of the outcomes of my choice like a family tree rather than say a flow chart. The tree begins with one mother and one father and ends with an infinite amount of children, and therefore an infinite amount of branches, endless possibilities. Self-sacrifice will not solve that equation.

What else would you be willing to forfeit? Would you give up my life? Of course you would, but there is nothing very heroic about that. You don’t know me from Adam, so why should you care? Let’s up the stakes; would you sacrifice your mother or father, your husband or wife, all your sons and daughters, to spare the rest of us? Now, that is the true measure of one’s heart. If you had to forfeit everything you hold dear, for our benefit, would you make that decision? When the time came, and someone had to die by your hand (your newborn child perhaps) could you make that decision?

For my part, the answer to all of those questions is a most definitive yes. Yes, I would give up everything and everyone I hold dear, myself included, if it led to the worthiest choice. Sadly, my bold declaration leaves me no nearer to an answer than when we started. My two options remain as elementary, and yet as complicated, as ever. For I still haven’t decided, which side is more worthy?

Sometime, very soon, I will choose to save humanity, or I will choose to save the earth. When that time comes, no one, and nothing, will be able to stand in my way. On that day, in that moment, I will be totally and utterly omnipotent.

Have I got your attention yet?

…

I had accepted my fate long before I grasped the seriousness of my destiny. Evolution had created me for a singular purpose, to do what God had been unwilling to. Choose Man or the Earth, but not both. Those were my options - my only options.

Just so we’re clear, I never asked for this position. I was not one of those kids who dreamt of battling alien invasions or intercepting rogue comets. Nor was I an avenging angel thwarting bullies in the school yard. I never once, not even for a second, wanted to play the role of God. So why choose me then? Why give such a monumental task to mere peon?

Who was I?

If you asked my friends and family that very same question, I imagine they would probably categorize me as a kindhearted, albeit peculiar, middle-aged man, who loves everything and everyone. My glass is always overflowing no matter the actual amount of liquid inside. Still I have a sarcastic and cynical streak mile wide. Personally, I like to think of myself as a cynical optimistic. I wish, hope, and pray for the best at every turn, but am not the least bit surprised if that turn leads to a bleak conclusion.

In general, I am probably not much different than the rest of you. No, I am not a wizard. I am not a comic book hero. I am not an even an actor. I’m a man pure and simple. This is a far cry from the destroyer of worlds, and an even further cry, from the child of old. Early on, I was anything but special. Do you remember that kid on the playground, standing all by himself? The only reason they didn’t pick him last for kickball, was because they never picked him at all. Do you remember the creepy guy at the back of the classroom who even the teachers refused to call on? That was me as well.

No, I wasn’t a sociopath or the bad boy. They just didn’t get me. Henceforth, I grew up in the shadows of the outcasts, the weirdoes, and the freaks. In spite, or, perhaps because of that, nothing clouded my rosy outlook on life. Neither their stares, nor their bad opinions could dampen my spirits. I was inimitable, and I didn’t care what anyone thought of me.

Given my gloomy future, solitude became my only option. Society was too much of a liability, and so I avoided it like the plague. If you are having a hard time following my logic, try to think of it this way. Why would a future butcher every want to make friends with the cow?

Lest anyone misunderstand my declarations as overly-dramatic, maniacal ramblings, there are a few things I should clarify. First off, I am not crazy, nor have I ever suffered any delusions of grandeur. Second, I seldom, if ever, lie about anything important. Lastly, I am not alone in my beliefs, not be a long shot.

There are many people who are intimately familiar with my looming decision. In particular, two ultra-conservative factions, formed long before I was even born, have been quite desperate to make my acquaintance. One sect seeks to protect humanity, no matter the cost, while the second, would just assume jettison us from the face of the earth like an evacuated pimple. Both hold legitimate claims to count me as their ally. Both have equally valid reasons for wanting me dead.

As such, they have been scouring the planet to find me for a long, long time. During the first forty years of my life, I had avoided their detection by dumb luck. Regrettably, my good fortune was nearing an end. They were closing in all around me, and I could no longer avoid my destiny. The day was fast approaching when I would have to make the most crucial decision in the history of existence.

Yet, in spite of all I had learned, I still, had absolutely no idea what side to take.

After everything I’ve just told you, which side would you choose? You know what? Hold that thought a little longer, I think there might be a few more factors to consider before you make that decision.

Chapter 1:

Nightmares suck when you are a kid. They are difficult enough to endure when you are an adult. For me, nightmares were an inescapable part of being Sean Michael Ryan. They haunted me from the second I closed my eyes, until the following morning.

While I seldom, if ever, had the exact same dream twice, there were two regularly recurring themes. The first was a blind, blond-haired, blue-eyed, mute, named Amber. The second was the fear she induced. Every nightmare meant someone’s life was in jeopardy, and with Amber involved, homicidal intentions were the norm.

It is important that you understand her immeasurable influence on my life. She was the epitome of all evil. Forget the monster in the closet or the vampire in the darkness. They were fuzzy bunnies in comparison. Amber, my gorgeous, goddess-like dream stalker, frightened the ever-loving-shit out of me.

In the very first dream I can remember, she murdered my entire family, and made me watch. With a single touch of her hand, she electrocuted them one by one. The next night, she and her bodyguards dragged me into a schoolyard for a public execution. She took my classmates, and fried them one at a time.

As a child, my mother was so frightened by my attacks that she sent me to see a team of mental health professionals. The assorted doctors I visited tried various techniques to cure me. There was psychoanalysis, medications, hypnosis, and even puppet therapy. Do you have any idea how humiliating it is to have a doctor ask a ten-year-old boy, if someone touched him there?

In the end, none of it worked. In part, because I refused to be honest about what I had seen. I refused to discuss Amber. They knew I was having bad dreams concerning death, but I would never reveal the source of those threats. As silly as it may sound, I believe if I ever did confide in anyone, she would kill them.

So I kept it to myself.

For most of life, I endured her indignity, and I won’t lie, it took its toll on me. Normal relationships were almost impossible. Try being Sean Ryan and having a sleepover or a camp out with your friends? I would have scared them to death with my shrieking. Now imagine dating? Do you think I could ever risk cuddling after sex? I kept worrying, what would happen if I nodded off. Even when I went to college, I required special permission to stay off campus as a freshman. I certainly couldn’t share a dorm room. All the aspects of my life were different, because close half of it, was spent not sleeping.

Imagine having those sorts of nightmares, as a four-year-old. Now, picture if you will, that I continued to have similar ones for a quarter century. Each night, brought a new torment. Each night, she murdered someone new. Every girlfriend I had was subjected to her wrath. She tortured my sisters and all my friends. Each new acquaintance in the real world was subjected to her fury in my sleep. Even when I met my future wife Leah, there was no reprieve.

At first, Amber toyed with her, taunting me, with fake attacks. As the years passed, she butchered my spouse in new more twisted ways. Sometimes, it was quick and violent, and other times slow and painful. Amber knew nothing of mercy.

Something tells me, if my life had continued on in that manner, what was left of my questionable sanity, would have abandoned me. Alas, my existence was about to have a dramatic change, which was initiated by, of all things, a dream. It was a dream about a tattoo. In comparison, it was an innocent, all be it intricate, reverie.

Believing there was something significant to my latest vision; I went out the next day and got that tattoo. A curious woman named Angel inked two arm bands, and a large banner stretching the circumference of my torso from my sternum to my backbone. For some inexplicable reason, I did not allow her finish the last inch.

The excuse I used was based on a Hawaiian legend I had seen on the History Channel. In order to complete any circular tattoo, one first needed to complete their family. If I closed it before then, it was very bad luck. Whatever the real reason, I had Angel stop two inches from my spine, I can’t actually say. I just knew it wasn’t time yet.

The night after, I climbed into bed, expecting as always, to endure Amber’s fury. Yet, somehow, something had changed. Maybe it was the pain, or the Oxycontin I had taken to overcome the eight hours of self-induced torture. No matter the cause, when Amber made her usual appearance, I sensed a new element to our relationship. I was no longer afraid of her. I suddenly understood Amber. She was not meant to be my tormentor. She had no intention of actually killing anyone.

Quite the opposite, what Amber wanted was …me. She was trying to collect me, like one does baseball cards or paintings. I was the Roger’s Hornsby or the Rembrandt of her collection. In order for her anthology to be complete, she needed to procure the last remaining piece. With my latest revelation, everything changed. All those years of torture were replaced by a desire, a desire to find her.

My new life continued in a similar direction for another decade. Each night, I went to bed looking forward to meeting Amber, and each night, we inched closer and closer to that union. Don’t ask me why, but I knew that if we were ever going to be together, it required a physical connection. With every new dream, we moved one step nearer to that embrace. In the year 2002, I saw her across town. By 2012, she was across the street. From there, we inched closer to each other. Within weeks of my fortieth birthday, I was near enough to accomplishing that very goal. Our hands extended, stretching toward one another. I was so near that I could smell her musky perfume, taste her clove laden breath, and feel her unnatural electricity radiating outward like the an arc reactor.

God, how I wanted her? I wanted to feel her skin against my own, to press my lips to hers. Her lips were pink and plump (Botox without the injection). Her curly blond hair bounced on her shoulders and dangled in my face. I smelt the Aussie shampoo and conditioner that she used. I gazed into her eyes, those aberrant blue orbs. I can’t begin to portray them correctly with words. They needed to be seen to be believed. Imagine the clearest, bluest sky possible. That was their color. Now, picture, instead of an iris and eye ball, the whole thing was blue. There was no white to her eyes or pupil at all. They were for lack of a better word exceptional.

Physically speaking, Amber was a pin-up girl waiting for a garage wall to hang on. Emotionally, she was sociopathic masochist bent on taking over the world, and oh, how I wanted her to take over mine.

Every aspect of my life was defined by Amber and her influence on me. Yet, I knew so very little about her, and what she had in mind for me. Her Things continued in much the same manner until I turned forty.

I received a second vision, completed the tattoo, and my two dreams morphed into a singular entity. I both feared and wanted Amber equally. She was dangerous but desirable. The conflict this shift created in my heart was overwhelming. I wanted her more than anything, and yet I feared she would ask me to do inexplicable horrors if we ever met.

As if that were not terrifying enough, she slowly revealed addition details to her master plan. Amber intended to rid the world of bad people. Yes, I realize how corny that sounds. When she first explained it to me, I thought I had gone round the bend. It was all way too much. My imaginary girlfriend was asking me to eliminate humanity. That was not the sort of thing that bodes well for a lifelong product of therapy. It was not until I saw it all together, and the dreams became more and more elaborate, that I recognized Amber’s true purpose. She believed that man was blight upon the earth. That we ruined and tainted all that was true and pure about nature. In Amber’s opinion, nothing could ever improve, without ridding the world of human beings. With my assistance, she could accomplish her task.

Amber’s master plan hinged on her making physical contact with me. With a single touch, she’d pass on her dark gift, and I would handle the rest. One stroke and I would be granted the choice to save the world or save humanity. One touch and the fate of all would be set.

Once I had that immeasurable power, she would will me, to do her bidding. I was the key to everything. I had always been the key. For forty years, she had been tracking me down; one night, one dream at a time. For the first thirty, she tried to scare me into revealing my location. For the next ten, she tried to convince me that I wanted her. When neither tactic drew us closer together, she called on me to make the decision. Amber was coming, of that there was no doubt, and it was only a matter of time, until she found me.

For my fortieth birthday, all my friends and I planned to celebrate the momentous occasion at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida. The night prior, I dreamt that Amber would meet us there. She would embrace me in front of all of them. When my metamorphosis was complete, and I was like her, I would kill every last person in that hotel.

But that night, when my family and friends went out to play, nothing happened. There was no sign of Amber.

Three weeks later we were going to a bar to watch the Super Bowl. I dreamt that instead of Madonna coming out at half-time to perform, it was Amber. My transformation happened right there on the stage, and then I murdered them all. Eighty thousand people dying in a pyrotechnic display only Madonna and the Super Bowl were capable of.

But that night, when my family and friends went out to play nothing happened. There was no sign of Amber.

Whenever I closed my eyes, I would picture where I was going to be the following day, and Amber would be there. Amber was at work. Amber was at the coffee shop. If I was going to the beach, she was there when I arrived. If she could invade my dreams, she knew where I wanted to be, and she’d beat me there.

In reality though, Amber was never there. She didn’t show up at any of those places. For months, things continued in a similar fashion. I dreamt of her, and she did not show. Soon, I wondered if maybe all those years, all my fears, weren’t nothing more than a mental disability. Granted, I had never met anyone else who had a recurring dream starring the same woman for four decades. Still, I was weird. Perhaps it was one of my many irregularities. Could Amber merely be a product of my twisted imagination, a character in my dreams?

On a night much like any other, I switched off the lights, closed my eyes, and expected more of the same; except there was no Amber. Hour after hour, I slept restlessly, expecting her to show, but she didn’t. Just when it seemed that I would have the first unhampered night’s sleep in memory, a new face appeared; a rather famous face at that. I cannot say what brought on the change. Perhaps the movie I had seen her in earlier that day had affected me subconsciously.

Reason be damned, there she was, the mid-twenties actress with the recently cropped red hair. Famous for her costarring role in a long line of teenage blockbusters, the Scottish gem was an A-lister before she was even an A cup. Her face had been plastered everywhere from the silver screen to the pages of Vogue. Still level headed, and driven to finish college, she juggled fame with real life like someone well beyond her years. The machine that is Hollywood had not been able to corrupt her, and for that, I for one, was impressed. Despite her immense fame and popularity, she was not the kind of girl one found in the grocery store tabloids either. There was seldom a bad word spoken about her, and in Hollywood, that is quite an accomplishment.

If I was being honest with myself I had a bit of thing for her. Since the moment she made the transition from a smart-ass–little-girl, to an attractive young woman, I became enamored. Though she was barely more than half my age, I fancied her in the way that many men fancy actresses. Except with me, the allure was more emotional than physical. I did not fantasize about her sexually or over-glamorize her movie persona. No, I liked her for the person she appeared to be off of the screen. I liked her for her. Was that the reason she was in my dreams? Could it part of some crush? If that was the case though, why was she just showing up then? I had been admiring her for years.

As if her appearance were not peculiar enough, there was an additional twist to the plot. Where, in the movies, she had two soft brown eyes, in my dream, she had mismatched irises. Her right eye was the same shade of pale blue as Amber’s and the left was olive toned green. Heterochromia iridis is not as uncommon as you may think. It affects 200,000 people in the United States alone. However eighty percent of those are born with it, and the possibility of both eyes changing to different colors, was a billion to one.

What was the significance of the new girl? What was the importance of her eye color? Was she a manifestation of the movie I had seen, my fascination with her, or was it something else? Unlike Amber, who either scared the shit out of me, or enticed me to want to touch her, the actress interested me in a whole other way. I wanted to meet her, to befriend her. I sensed that we were destined to be an integral part of each other’s lives going forward. That was the kind of allure she held for me. It was so powerful when I woke up the following morning, and she wasn’t there, I was decidedly disappointed.

Chapter 2:

As usual, morning arrived too early after another restless night’s slumber. I count myself lucky to be alive with as little time as I spent asleep. My wife Leah stirred and I knew she was awake. When I rolled over to kiss her cheek, she whispered in my ear, How’s Amber?

It had become a running joke between the two of us, that I had both a real wife, and dream wife. Leah was one of a handful of people I had confided the true nature of my nightmares with. It was a great relief